Wrisk Factors: Bringing risk to life in the eyes of the consumer.

Our novel approach to bringing transparency into the insurance process.

Aug 23, 2019

There’s a whole generation in the UK that has known nothing else than associating “insurance” with stuffed animals and opera singing adverts. These endless ads have numbed much of the British public into assuming that comparison sites are the best option of choice for buying insurance.

First of all, hats off to these comparison sites for mining the seam so effectively over the years. The TV companies have also done very well, landing £100m+ of annual revenue from them. This is dwarfed by the amounts that insurers have paid to the comparison sites to source customers.

There had to be a better way.

When we started Wrisk, we set aside the traditional way of doing insurance and instead asked customers what they’d ideally like when it comes to insurance. Our customer research showed almost unanimously, people felt traditional insurance industry approaches were opaque, complex and “one-size-fits-most” at best. Their feedback highlighted three core themes:

Simple: No horrible long questionnaires and policy documents.Personal: Base it on what I need, not on what products the insurers want to sell me.Transparent: Tell me how I’m priced, and so I can learn what makes me more/less risky.

The last of these mantras, the theme of transparency, was the most interesting one for us to playback to the big insurers in the UK. One particularly memorable response from one of them was that while they could well understand the customer appeal of this level transparency, they’d never want to share such information as it was just too commercially sensitive.

And so that became our opportunity. Show people what makes them more/less risky and how it impacts their price. Do it in an easy to digest form. Sprinkle in a dose of humour to some of the insights. Importantly, make it just an option for customers to see these insights (in case they’re not interested).

The brains of our actuary and UX designers came together to crack this challenge. In building our own pricing model, our UX designers wanted to externalise the impact of the model's features to our customers, fulfilling our ambition of throwing back the curtain on the inner workings of complex insurance pricing. This gave life to the Wrisk Score and Wrisk Factor cards.

Wrisk Score and Wrisk Factor cards

The Wrisk Score allows us to be completely transparent about the way we price. A bit like a credit score, but for personal risk. The score builds as customers answer a short set of questions. With every answer, we deliver instant feedback with our Wrisk Factor cards, which illustrate the impact of how each piece of information effects their risk.

Working on a B2C basis, we tested the score and factor cards at our weekly user testing sessions. Almost without exception, the testers loved them and commented regularly that even if they didn’t like learning about what made them more risky, they were pleased it was at least a transparent process —something they’d never experienced before when it came to buying insurance.

‍Wrisk just makes it all so easy. I had insurance in under 5 minutes. They explain the questions that are asked of you and why you are scored in a certain way. They are also super responsive on the chat to any questions you may have. Overall just a great service.

M Kazzam, Nov 2018.‍

We’ve also taken Wrisk to distribution partners to demonstrate how we can tailor the Wrisk Factor cards to use partner-specific branding, messaging and content. Their reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.

Feedback so far on our Wrisk Factor cards?

✅ Customers love them

✅ Distribution partners love them

✅ We love them, as the customer gets what they asked for….. greater transparency.

You’ll be able to see our latest application of Wrisk with new partner products for the RAC and BMW/MINI … stay tuned for launch dates...

Niall Barton

Insurance guy with digital experience. Part-time DJ, recently changed his name from Nigel.